American Politics Journal -- Will the Guilty in Florida Ever Pay?

American Politics Journal

Will the Guilty in Florida Ever Pay?
By David J. Gonzo

Friday, April 13, 2001 - Boston (APJP) - By the time you read this, The Nation will have posted one of the most important investigative stories of the year to their web site, and their April 30 issue will have hit the newsstands - in civilized towns and cities, at least.

The buzz around the story began to build yesterday morning when a press release issued by the progressive magazine - which seems to at last be abandoning its somewhat sterile, wonkish style in favor of more hard-hitting content and writing under the editorial purview of Katrina van den Heuvel and Washington honcho David Corn - announced publication of an investigative article by John Lantigua. The headline on the press release read, "Nation Investigation Reveals Florida Officials Shut Out Tens of Thousands of Black Voters on Election Day."

A little further into the teaser, however, came an even more ominous possible total for disenfranchised Floridians: 200,000.

That's right, 200,000.

The thrust of Lantigua's article deals not with the documented and now-notorious cases of racially-profiling roadblocks, or the hundreds of hard-right activists engaged in illegal electioneering and intimidation at polling places (as witnessed by APJ's own Mac MacArthur), but with the use of information-age technology to systematically deprive citizens of their constitutionally-guaranteed right to vote.

Lantigua's article builds on the groundbreaking investigative work of Gregory Palast, whose reports for the BBC and London newspapers created a buzz among Internet activists and political junkies that has not abated - and exposed America's corporate press as either too lazy or too biased (or perhaps both) to dig for the truth.

One of the most telling findings: an effort by GOP officials and conservative-leaning consulting firms to purge the Florida voting rolls of felons yielded thousands upon thousands of errors that Florida officials were aware of for at least a year.

Florida state officials also held onto $100,000 earmarked for voter education that had been specifically requested by county supervisors. This money would have given many first-time black voters information crucial to making their vote count.

Perhaps worst of all, Lantigua presents evidence that makes it unmistakable that partisan right-wingers engaged in every possible tactic to undo the work of one of the most successful minority "get out the vote" and registration campaigns in history - from "scrubbing" registration lists to turning their back on clear evidence that polling sites would be pushed well beyond their capacity.

And Lantigua, like Palast, names names.

Unfortunately, given that the executive branch is presently occupied by an illegitimate administration that has put John "Southern Partisan" Ashcroft in charge of what used to be called "justice" and both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP (who in turn are controlled by Trent "CCC" Lott and Tom "Exterminator-Perjurer" DeLay), this writer has little expectation that any action will be taken at the federal level. We're not counting on the indictments and convictions that should come down - especially since the bogus POTUS's handlers are moving quickly to load the courts with Federalist Society cronies who will rule on cases with a nudge and a wink.

…at least for now.

Let's just hope that once the Democrats take back the Senate (which many expect to happen before the year ends) that they drop their all-too-acquiescent two-step and start investigating this scandal - the Florida apparatchiks who made deals with data "experts" and ignoring tens of thousands of errors, the county officials who kept polling places and ballots gimmickable, the top state officials who initially deprived Floridians of the right to vote, and the U.S. Supreme Court justices that contradict dozens of their own rulings and subverted "equal protection" to hand the Oval Office to an unqualified loser.



Home • Latest • Archive • Search